Born in the United States as a western Kansas farm girl, Trina Cole Harlow grew up riding horses, moving cattle, helping with wheat harvest, working on the farm, baking, and sewing. From the age of five years old, she has used needles, threads, and sewing machines to create. 

She first learned how to sew in a youth organization in the United States called  4-H. The first thing she ever sewed was an apron - a common first-project for 4-H kids. Her first sewing teacher was a woman named Pat and she learned how to sew in the community building of the town of 54 people where she grew up. She then began a sewing tutelage with Elizabeth McCready Rose, an Irish immigrant to western Kansas, who took Trina under her watchful eyes and taught her to how to sew with perfection and advanced skill. Under Liz's leadership, Trina won every competition that she entered for years. She vividly remembers that the most important thing she learned from Liz was to do it and do it right, and rip it out and start over if it wasn't done will skillful perfection.  Liz and Trina were quite a team.  Liz pressed Trina to learn, stopping their long summer days of sewing only for a 3:00pm spot of tea - every single day, five days a week. Trina's cabinets, to this day, are full of silver trays that she won as the Grand Champion sewist at each summer's county fair. Going on to competition at the State of Kansas Fair and competitions like Make it Yourself with Wool, Trina's passion and love for the technical and creative aspects of sewing and tailoring were sharply honed and developed. Liz made a tremendous impact on her life.  Liz came by herself to the United States from Ireland when she was 16 years old to work in garment factories in New York City and was an expert seamstress and tailor. Liz also wanted Trina to see life outside of western Kansas and in 1978 she took Trina home to Ireland with her and then on to England to visit family. The trip really changed Trina's life as she tasted, touched, smelled, and saw other cultures, heard other languages and vocal inflections, and saw how fabrics were manipulated and symbolic in other parts of the world, different than where she lived in Kansas. 

Trina went onto study Fashion Design, earning a degree in Clothing and Textiles from Kansas State University. During college she interned with a reputable Dallas, Texas airline uniform company and designed a new uniform line for Midway Airlines in Chicago. She spent her internship flying back and forth to Chicago to meet with company representatives, deliver finished uniforms, and put on fashion shows at the Field Museum of Natural History on the shores of Lake Michigan, and then on the runway of Midway Airlines for the likes of Michael Jordan and Oprah Winfrey. 

Her senior year of college she won a huge design competition in St. Louis, Missouri in which she competed with students from all over the United States, including the esteemed Fashion Institute of Technology. This young farm girl from western Kansas took home the big awards at the competition, much to the surprise of the FIT students, and Trina was offered a job on the spot with a well-known and better women's wear company in Dallas, TX as a fashion designer.  Prior to starting her position as fashion designer in Dallas, she attended the Paris Fashion Institute in Paris, France and received instruction from designers including Yves St. Laurent, Claude Montana, the House of Chloe, and others. 

Trina worked as a designer for a few years, but eventually felt a strong calling to make a broader impact on the world and a difference in the lives of children and adolescents.  Perhaps Liz, who never finished high school and who was the best teacher Trina ever had, is who inspired her to become a teacher.  Trina went on to become an award winning teacher. For 21 years she was a Texas school art, theatre, and journalism teacher; from 2014-2020 she coordinated the art education program at Kansas State University as an instructor; and beginning in 2020 she served as a tenure-track assistant professor of art education and fiber arts instructor at the University of Central Arkansas.  After commuting out of state for 8 years to serve as faculty at these two universities, she returned to Texas where she has lived full time since 1984 and assumed a position as the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Art Education at the University of North Texas. She retired from the university in May of 2024. She has led fibers workshops in Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, New York, New Mexico, Arkansas, Uganda, Switzerland, and Ireland, and through virtual spaces. Her love of fibers runs deep and all the way back to the prairie of western Kansas. She is a state, national, and international workshop leader and speaker on art education, anxiety and trauma, school behavior, and various forms of fiber arts – including improvisational embroidery, needle felting, and weaving. Her actual preference is multi-media fiber work and painting with water media and oils. 

She loves to take fiber and canvas and transform it into a story. 

Story is a powerful medium.